Get Started Mixing Music - In Just 30 minutes

hello everybody some comments have flooded in saying would I do something about mixing absolutely here we are at the bar got the booze I'm ready to get started and show you my favorite cocktail now what what do you mean not that type of mixing whatever kind of mixing is there mixing music oh really okay let's do it just before we get started I just wanted to make a couple of points a lot of people think mixing and mastering is the sort of magic sauce that can make a mediocre piece of music absolutely incredible there is no such thing as fixing it in the mix and the best mixing you can do is a really great arrangement so if you've written a wonderful track then good mixing can make it absolutely incredible if you've written a stinky track as we all do from time to time the mix is not going to help so having got that out of the way let's look at my way of going through this a lot of the time they're fairly basic to be honest because if you work in fast turnaround television you're not going to spend a huge amount of time mixing things out we've got a very simple track here which we wrote a couple of weeks ago and it's just drums bass a little dulcimer thing some strings in soft piano and all from spitfyre lab so these are all free sounds which you could download now [Music] remember this one yeah quite low this which I thought okay this will be a good example now what I'm going to do is I'm going to give you all these original tracks down below here so that you can download them and have a go at the mix yourself so there's also a little quick guide to all the essential points about how to go about mixing your music I'm not as I say sort of a big sort of mixing guru at all I'm just but I have a workflow and it sort of works so that's what I'm sharing with you today the first thing I do as you see is to level up all the MIDI tracks so they all start and finish at the same place this helps a lot when you bounce them to audio I personally far prefer mixing audio to MIDI there's a number of reasons for this apart from anything else if I want to come back to this track in a year's time I might not have the same sounds to send plugins installed on my system and so if I've got audio audio is always audio so it really helps now the first thing to do is to go through and listen to each track in turn to make sure there aren't any little mistakes in there which you haven't noticed because when you listen to them all together it's really easy to miss some really quite oh my load mistakes and you have to be careful that that doesn't you don't overlook that and in the big swirly thing that goes on with the mix you kind of miss the fact that there's a sort of an f-sharp against an F there you go oh what what am i doing so listen through to each track you'd be surprised how many you know creative mistakes there are in there so what we've got going on here is we've got obviously got a drummer a bass kick and a snare and I'd prefer those on two separate tracks now with this particular piece of software on this particular program I can't send them two separate outputs so all I'm going to do is duplicate the MIDI and then delete the kick from one and the snare from the other open up here we go and then bounce those separately to audio so then I will then have okay let's get rid of these so select all these boys and girls the top there that Lord goodbye and now do the same in Reverse with the other one which one did I delete that's right sure so now I should have both of them great okay super duper right now let's start by mix what I'm going to do is I'm going to render in place each of these and so firstly you want to make sure that the levels are right and by right I don't mean balanced against each other but you've got a decent level coming out of the instrument so that you've got to say that you're not going to have an audio file which is overly quiet so right let's render these in place there's number one and that is the snare isn't it so in this label a snare then we'll go and do the kick drum which is that one there so let's render that one in place so all this is doing is creating an audio file so now we've got an audio version of the now we're going to do that with all the rest of the instruments one by one so this is going to be fast passage of sound of time because the nice things you don't have to sit there and watch me do it okay welcome back so we bounced all the MIDI files to audio so these now you see why I try and extend the MIDI file so that they're all the same length so it's nice and easy to import into your session and these audio files here are available to you to mix and they the link to that is underneath so you just fill in there's a forum and we'll send you a guide to mixing and these audio files to have a go right let's first of all start looking at each of these sounds in turn what I tend to do is I listen to each sound in turn and work out what I need to do to it and then get the whole thing going together as a mix so I'm listening to it both in context and I'm stenciling the mouse as well [Music] okay let's have a listen to the drums [Music] right this kick drum needs a little bit of compression on most kick drums new compression and compression is a very very very useful thing and let's here we go let's get right let's get a compressor up and I'll show you how it works oops hang on let's put the kick drum compressor dynamics what am I going to use okay I'm going to use a very I use a lot of weight plugins compressors really aren't going to be much the same there okay so what you have in terms of controls here you have a threshold this is the if what a compressor does is it reduces the dynamic range of the signal so it makes the loudest bits get quieter and it sort of brings housing together but it has a much more profound effect than that in terms of the overall quality and color of the sound right the most the controls you have here are the threshold and that is the the point in the signal how loud the Sigma has to get before the compressor has an effect the ratio how much you're going to reduce the dynamic range and the attack and the release the attack is how quickly the effect takes and how the release is how long it stays then you've got make up game because what often happens obviously if you're going to reduce the dynamic range particularly bringing the top down the whole thing gets quieter so you need to turn the whole signal up and that's what the makeup game is there to do so if we first of all if we run this and just cycle it around over that period right here's the threshold it's having no effect whatsoever up there as you bring it down it's turn the compressor up a bit I'll turn it up SuperDuper so you can see what's going on and on this load classic compressor so as you bring it down no effect at all there as soon as the threshold gets down into the signal area you can see the gain reduction kicking in there now you only want we only want we don't want really strong compression on this with this we want and a four or five and actually I want a bit more attack the thing with the attack is the very beginning of a note is the most in many respects is the most important bit it's called the transient and it gives it a lot of character if you'd have your attack really really short so that the compression kicks in straightaway it's going to reduce the that transient as well as everything else and what actually one of the effects you might be looking for is to actually ease off on the attack so that the transient comes through and then you can bring down the rest of the the sound a bit so let's just bringing in there you go can you hear that how much more slack we've got on the front of it do we want that okay no point in listening to it in an isolation right now let's listen to the thing in context with the rest of the arrangement [Music] you can hear it's got a lot more swag to it now you could EQ that as well and um you there's if you equ before or after it has a slightly different effect on the sound I tend to compress and then EQ but a lot of people do it the other way around it doesn't really the only there's no right or wrong with any of this it's what your ears tell you is right or wrong so it sounds good it is good no I'm not what I am gonna do is add some reverb I've got two reverbs going on in here to choose from there is this one which is a big long one which is an algorithmic one this is the lexicon native reverb and it sort of models the those come on classic reverbs like the 960 in the 480 and the 300 and stuff like that and it has a really nice long swushi it's more of an effect than a simulation of a room then I'm using spaces which is a sampled reverb so it is a it's a it's a sample of a real room so they they take us a profile of the real room and then you can put your own sound through as though it's in that room so I've chosen their small drum room because you just what I'm looking for in here is I'm just looking for some a little bit of ambience so let's as though it's too much too much [Music] actually that's way too long let's find a shorter one drum room drum room drum room la big drum rooms entrance drums drums I want a small I want I want a much less gated drum no I don't want a gated drum room I want something with less than one and a half seconds on small drum room here we go let's go back to let's try that one it's only got a second [Music] [Music] [Music] okay that's not bad quite like that now let's put some of the hack through as well but leave the kick dry [Music] okay good um now let's listen to this dulcimer thing because I think there's this it's definitely going to need some reverb but I think it needs something else I'm quite how about a little bit of delay and your main controls here are the length of time and this is a dotted eighth note ping-pong so it's going left to right and the blend as this is in line so I this is on the channel so I want to put the dry dry means the original sound wet is all delay so we're going to have a little bit feedback is important that's how long how many times it repeats and how long it lasts [Music] quite like that now we're going to send some of that to the Mexican reverb [Music] now we're definitely and have some EQ going on in here [Music] right what am I going to use and it doesn't really matter which one you use I'm going to use Renaissance from wit from from waves which I wish I liked now the way EQ works obviously it can work in a number of different ways what you're doing is you're boosting or cutting frequencies at specific parts and you can have this particular EQ has four bands but some of them have many many more and some of them have fewer and the controls you have are you can choose the frequency itself where it is you can choose how much to cut to boost or cut and most in many respects most importantly you can choose the shape of that so you can make it very very precise like that or you can make it much much more broad and these very precise ones are very useful for getting rid of on unwanted frequencies so for example if we just play this as we system [Music] say we didn't like that particularly what what the technique is you make it as narrow as you can go you boost it up until you've identified the frequency and then instead of boosting you cut it then you can just take out that frequency you don't want it's correct it's good it's really useful it's really useful trust me now with this one though what I actually want is I want to roll off any low frequencies which are not the wanting me which may be hanging around and I want a little bit of lift in this or upper mids [Music] bit of sparkle like that okay I like that now let's listen to it in context [Music] right okay moving on we're gonna win it we're actually nearly there so how do you think it's going it's going right I mean it's this is very simple this is a really really really simple piece really and so all we're doing is exploring the basic principles you could make this a great deal more complicated and you can imagine if you're doing you know something you know it's trying to mix something like Handsome's Dark Knight or something we got hundreds and hundreds of thousands and thousands of tracks and it's all going whoosh and you've got really really complicated bottom end going on that you need somebody like you know allymeier sand or somebody who said yeah this wizard-like person with faders everywhere and it's all fantastic yeah and this is just sort of me band thing below and I hope you're getting the gist of what the little approach now okay so we got the truck what you kept what frequently you would do on a more busy track is you do something called side-chaining which is a way of allowing that kick to come through and you use a compressor on the other tracks which is triggered by the kick so it goes every time the kick goes the risk of all and it just lets it speak through in this kind of lovely sort of clear way but that is too complicated because this is a nice simple little bit of music and I'm over complicating things already as per usual right have I said enough about this right what we need to do now so we got the drums we got the bass we got the little dulcimer e thing what about this piano there's not well it's a nice sound I'm not gonna mess with it you know why make it more complicated than it needs to be [Music] sound nice put it in the mix [Music] I'm putting a bit of reverb on it I wonder I'm just gonna try this I wonder if again a little bit of subtle compression might help just lift it a little bit during the let's see how this goes oh no dodo don't go into automation [Music] might just lift those tails up a bit if I give it about two to one and a soft attack [Music] it's not very subtle is it [Music] it's been in the mix again [Music] what you think I don't know I'm not sure that's helping at all [Music] okay I'm gonna leave it for now jury's out what about these strings [Music] they're quite wide already I was thinking do they need any kind of stereo stereo nests they can definitely do with a bit of reverb and then I think we're going to be [Music] okay look we've been going long enough I'm going to start doing the actual Mixy Mixy bit because so far we've been looking at all the ingredients have you noticed how we've actually avoided the whole thing of actually putting it together and making it sound fantastic now is the moment where that is going to happen and so what I tend as I say look I I am NOT a mix guru I'm just showing you how I do it um I start by mixing every turning everything off and starting with my main event which is my piano it's gonna cut you think um did I play the PIPA okay and now I mix up [Music] you need to be able to hear those hats so that you can hear it the rhythm against the snare okay that's nice the gist of what what you're supposed to do when you mix some notes say I say supposed to as opposed to what I'm actually really doing is each instrument needs to find it's a little frequency Nisha you know it's needs to have you know somewhere to sit and so you carve out little gaps in the mix where the dulcimer is gonna sit you carve out a gap in the mix where the snare is gonna sit so there's a clarity to it they can hear all these individual elements coming together in one wonderful Michelin 3-star so Frey that's what we put creating here no we're not we're doing a sort of a really nice big match no we're not no we're not going away okay we're it's gonna be great it's gonna be great [Music] then that compression works on the on the piano [Music] now there's two ways of doing if you want to automate things or if you want to change the volume over the course of time because for example when the dulcimer comes in we want a little bit more present and then when it's caught the ear of the audience you can pull it back a little bit and they can still hear it and then something else comes in so what we want is that dulcimer to be a bit louder at the start and then get a bit softer as it goes on what people do people yeah a lot of people do is for example if you take this bit of a soft piano here you can use what'm Pro Tools is known as clip gain in other words you can turn that individual bit up and down so you can go through and tweak it almost note by note so if there's a note which stands out a little bit too much you can just get mmm I don't think that's quite right I just got to pull that nanum it and it's a very efficient way of sort of streamlining a track and this I could go through and do this but I'm not going to the alternative way which was you know is you use right automation you use automation and so that's what we're gonna do I'm still not sure actually I want a bit more to play with with the dulcimer it's a bit more quiet side well dulcimer is quiet guy I know look it's actually coming it's really quiet so I haven't got much - let's turn it up a bit now it's gonna be way way way way way too loud but I will be able to turn it down and then I've got some Headroom let's see what happens [Music] okay what we're gonna do now take the strings out we're going to automate this so it's going to start a little bit louder now you can still hear it but it's not fighting with the piano cool get your coat come outside also you're not that kind of fighting [Music] little push there to notice that subtle mwah subtle okay good right that's number one now we're going to do the same thing with strings because the strings need to start quite subtle [Music] ah [Music] pay attention guy so you there they're supporting but it's only about two-thirds of the way through that we really want them to start going ready and [Music] yeah and suspension resolution little push at the end for it is done and now ladies and gentlemen he puts on the sunglasses of doubt no I cast them off we're gonna listen to this and I'm gonna listen on my open-back headphones to check that I haven't made a complete pig's ear of this okay either these are too loud or I think that dulcimer does come in a bit hot [Music] allow this tune I like this too [Music] you could rap over this actually be quite wrong not the dose from they need somebody a bit more ass-kicking look that's all that's all I got for you and I hope you found it useful I think probably those of you who sort of struggle a bit with your mixing thing hope you've got the broad workflow there are so much more to it than this and I'm really not very good at this I mean this isn't my big thing and the important thing with mixing and one of the best things about mixing with the likes of sort of gurus like Jake Jackson is he'll come and listen to your music afresh so what you're getting is four ears not two and you got a completely new approach to your music and everything else and so they're going to pull out elements of the music in a creative way which you never quite thought of that way so you know what you don't get when you mix your own thing is objectivity and but nonetheless I think it sounds a bit cleaner than it did when we started but bear in mind all these audio files and a really great little guide to getting started with mixing written by Tim Johnson who is our course manager and he is a real he is a genuine mix guru he really doesn't know what he's doing and were it not for this Kovach crisis we would have done this video together but nonetheless read his guide because it's really great download these tracks and have a go yourself and don't forget to come back and see us again very soon cheerio you

Channel: Guy Michelmore

Views: 64,098

Keywords: thinkspace, education, music, film, scoring, games, television, composition, composer, guy michelmore, guy, michelmore, thinkspace education, Music Education, mixed media, How to Mix, How to mix Music, Cubase 10.5, Cubase, mixing and mastering, mixing tutorial, get started mixing music

Id: dqCCPYNYGq8

Length: 30min 57sec (1857 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 10 2020